transcripthq.io

What It Is

TranscriptHQ is a subtitle and transcription service built for developers and content teams. Its core offering is a REST API that extracts transcripts from YouTube, TikTok, Twitter/X, Twitch, Vimeo, Dailymotion, Bilibili, and uploaded audio/video files. It also provides a Playground and a Chrome Extension, making it easier for non-technical users to get started.

Core Capabilities

Feature-wise, it supports batch processing for channels, playlists, or individual videos, with exports in plain text, timestamped text, SRT, VTT, JSON, and other formats. For YouTube videos that already have native captions, it can extract them directly; when captions are unavailable, it can use Whisper AI transcription, with noise reduction, volume normalization, automatic language detection, word-level timestamps, and translation into 100+ languages. The API uses a simple REST model, with examples for cURL, Node.js, Python, Go, PHP, and Ruby, making it suitable for automation workflows.

Pricing and Value

Pricing is fairly transparent: free signup includes 3 credits; Starter is $5/month with 1,000 credits; Pro is $15/month with 4,000 credits; Business is $49/month with 15,000 credits, with 20% off annual billing. Native YouTube captions are charged at 1 credit per video, which is very cost-effective for long videos. Whisper costs 1 credit/minute, while word-level timestamps cost 1.5 credits/minute. Note that unused credits do not roll over, and concurrency and rate limits increase with higher-tier plans.

Pros and Cons

Its strengths are ease of use, broad platform coverage, practical output formats, and support for both API users and no-code users. Credits are automatically refunded for system errors, and the FAQ explains billing, languages, and task resumption. The limitations are that the public pages do not clearly state whether it is open source, whether self-hosting is supported, or provide details on webhooks/SDKs, data retention, and compliance. While its AI accuracy is claimed to be typically 95%+, results can still be affected by language, accent, and background noise.

Who It’s For and Access from China

TranscriptHQ is suitable for developers and operations teams working on content archiving, subtitle generation, multilingual translation, video data analysis, and bulk transcription. The main site does not provide information about access from mainland China, and payment methods are not disclosed. If you have network or compliance requirements, it is worth comparing alternatives such as OpenAI Whisper API, AssemblyAI, Deepgram, Google Cloud Speech-to-Text, Azure AI Speech, or choosing a locally deployable Whisper-based solution.